2270 Insects. 



death. I tried the experiment with a Ligustri and Tiliae, taken at the same time, but 

 did not succeed. They (the two latter) were beautiful specimens, and most probably 

 had not been in coitu. — /. Johnson; 27, Kensington Square, August 26, 1848. 



Hermaphrodite Specimen of Smerinthus Populi. — Between the 9th and 17th of 

 August of this year, we have bred twenty specimens of Smerinthus Populi, which had 

 remained only five weeks in chrysalis. One of these was a fine hermaphrodite speci- 

 men, which came forth on the 13th of August. The left side of this specimen has the 

 characters of the male, and the right those of the female ; the left side of the body is 

 one-eighth of an inch longer than the right, which, however, is of the greatest size ; 

 the left wing is of a dark colour, and is one quarter of an inch shorter than the right, 

 which is of a light colour ; the antennae also are different. We have also obtained 

 two broods of caterpillars from the above specimens. These were hatched on the 21st 

 of August. — W. H. and C. H. Longley ; 1, Eaton Place, Park Street, Oxford Street, 

 September 6, 1848. 



On the diseased Larvce of Plusia Iota. — In my observations on the diseased larvae 

 of Plusia Iota (Zool. 2033), I assumed that all I had met with belonged to this spe- 

 cies, which further experience has shown may not have been the case. Last autumn 

 I had twenty-one young larvae of Iota ; ten I sent to Mr. Henry Doubleday, and re- 

 tained the rest : of these, eight survived the winter, and recommenced feeding about 

 the beginning of April; and to my surprise and delight, before the end of June each 

 had produced a perfect moth, never having exhibited the slightest symptoms of 

 disease. I had great numbers of young larvae of P. percontationis, and though many 

 were alive in spring, yet they looked very sickly, and only twenty ever fed at all — again 

 showing that comparatively Iota is the more hardy. I have several times bred per- 

 contationis, and never knew it diseased before this year, when two out of the twenty 

 were affected in apparently the same manner as Iota had previously been. Not caring 

 about percontationis I did not separate the diseased from the healthy, in order to as- 

 certain if the disease (whatever it might be) was infectious, which did not appear to 

 be the case, for the two that were attacked died, and the rest produced moths. A fur- 

 ther motive for keeping the diseased larvae was to watch the appearance they might 

 afterwards assume ; and this was so exactly like that of the diseased Iota, that no one, 

 I think, could have distinguished them; so that, as I have before intimated, the 

 diseased larvae I had met with in previous years were not, probably, all of the same 

 species. Perhaps I ought to say that the larvae of the two species, in their healthy 

 state, are very much alike : the only difference I could perceive was, that Iota is a 

 somewhat deeper green, and has the lateral lines pure white, which in percontationis 

 are yellowish. I had a larva of chrysitis this year affected in precisely the same man- 

 ner, and it died like the rest ; so that three out of the four Plusiae that occur here ap- 

 pear subject to the same disease. I have not yet noticed it in Gamma. I saw 

 numbers of the diseased larvae again this summer, but the moths of this genus were 

 rare. I did not see a single Iota, only three or four chrysitis, and seven or eight per- 

 contationis. I thought it strange that, of so many larvae of Plusiae as I had previously 

 met with, not one should have proved healthy, though in numbers of them there 

 was no appearance of disease at the time. I was therefore curious to know some- 

 thing of their habits, and, with this view, planted such weeds as I found them upon, 

 and over these placed a large cage of gauze wire, into which I put my larvae ; and 

 though I knew there were so many in that limited space, I scarcely ever saw one; 

 winch leads me to suppose that they do not, in their natural state, expose themselves 



